1. A Roman mosaic from the Villa Cicerone at Pompeii, showing a street scene with musicians: a woman playing a double reed-pipe (tībiae), and two men playing castanets and a drum (tympanum). Detail of a Roman Mosaic of a Street Scene with Musicians (Tympanon, Aulos, Castanets) from the Villa Del Cicerone in Pompeii. The Mosaic Is Signed by Dioskurides of Samos. 79 CE 70AD. Mosaic. Museo Archeologico Nazionale (Naples). Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:MAN_Dioscoride_Samio_1040612.JPG.

Explōrātiō Prīma (I) Adventure One

Where and When Are We Today?

Plautus’ Menaechmi

Pronouns

Singular Latin and English Pronouns

Plural Latin and English Pronouns

The Verb sum

Forms of sum with Subject Pronouns (Present Tense)

Drill

Nouns

Vocabulary

Predicates

Today’s RULE

Exercises 1-8

Vocabulary

Translating from English to Latin

Exercises 9-11

Reading: Roman Personal Names

Adjectives

Vocabulary

Agreement of Gender

Word Order

Exercises 12-14

Verb Tenses: Present, Imperfect, Future

Forms of sum, Imperfect Tense, with Subject Pronouns

Exercises 15-19

Forms of sum, Future Tense, with Subject Pronouns

Exercises 20-24

Personal Endings of the Verb

Verb Personal Endings

Exercises 25-29

Where and When Are We Today?

Campus Martius, Rōma

Mēnsis Martius

M. Fulviō Cn. Manliō Vulsō cōnsulibus

Campus Martius, Rome

March, 189 B.C.E.

A few days later, Latinitas returned. I had begun to suspect her visit was a hallucination, or, if it wasn’t, that she would never come back because I failed to recite the poem three times like she told me to. Seeing her back in the apartment thus came as a shock. But as I was about to open my mouth, she warned me to keep silent, holding her finger to her lips. Coming closer she whispered, Salvē, “hello.” She served me another liquid, one with a heavier taste, and when I drank it, we were suddenly in a different place and time.

This was the scene. We were perched on top of a set of wooden bleachers facing a wooden stage. A muddy field stretched around us, in the bend of a river that was silty but swift-moving. Some stray pigs were rooting through piles of trash. The hills around us were covered in mudbrick houses, a few larger buildings, like small square castles, jutting out here and there. Through an atmosphere hazy with the smoke of cooking fires I could also make out the sloping roofs of temples, supported by capitals and columns.

Before us there were three actors on the stage. They wore masks with wild expressions, striking poses as they spoke. Ūnus, duō, trēs, Latinitas said, pointing at them and counting on her fingers; one, two, three. It was not easy to hear – the crowd, both men and women, was very loud – but I understood the numbers. With a grand gesture of her arm Latinitas began to speak:

“These are my people! This is the city of Rome; that, the Tiber river. My birthplace lies not far from here, to the east. We are watching a play, a comedy, called the Menaechmi. It’s a story of two brothers, identical twins separated at birth, one named Menaechmus, the other, Sosicles. Menaechmus was kidnapped while young and grew up in Greece. Sosicles grew up in their native city, Syracuse, in Sicily, and was given his lost brother’s name. Sosicles-Menaechmus sailed from Syracuse to Greece, accompanied by his slave Messenio, to search for his brother. There Messenio stumbles upon the original Menaechmus without knowing it; he ends up running errands for both men, who he thinks are the same person. Sed, but… in the final scene of the play, Messenio finally realizes what is going on: geminī sunt, they are twins.

“Titus Maccius Plautus,” she continued, “is the playwright. Plautus learned his craft while working as a stagehand and serving as an actor before he started writing plays. All of them were comedies; by the time he died, he had written nearly 50 scripts. He was extremely popular and deserved it. I don’t care if he only wrote comedies. Quisquis erat, whoever he was, he was a good boy, full of good sentences. Don’t believe it, my dear, if you don’t want to, but we were lovers for a time, in that period of time you call ‘the past’.”

The actors were in the middle of the revelation scene that formed the climax of the play. I did not understand their lines, although their hand gestures and intonation made the flow of the conversation clear. Later, with Latinitas’ help, I made a translation I will share with you. The exchange went something like this. I have given you the Latin so that you can practice pronouncing it. I don’t expect you to understand what is being said, any more than she expected me to. But practice reading the Latin aloud; in class, try working with two partners, each of you taking the role of Menaechmus, Messenio, or Sosicles:

Plautus’ Menaechmi

Latinitas interrupted. “What do you say? You think you can understand some of this? Ō dī atque deae, o gods and goddesses, come and help us! My friend here knows so little about Latin right now. You have your book? Open it.” And I did.

Pronouns

“We are going to start with pronouns. pronouns point to people and things without naming them. You will understand what they are from these examples in Latin and English. The first group are called singular pronouns because they point to one person. The second group are called plural pronouns because they point to more than one person. Repeat after me:”

Singular Latin and English Pronouns

Plural Latin and English Pronouns

“Ok, what do you know about verbs?”

Verbs, I repeated, hazy about the meaning.

The Verb sum

“A verb is a word that describes an action. For example, in English: see, give, go, went, consider, prepare, think, teach, explode. So many actions! Some verbs – is, seem, become – also describe states of being.”

“Each verb comes in different forms. Forms are the different ways words are sounded and spelled; different forms of the same word have different meanings. See, saw, seen! The same verb, but three different forms. Explode! Exploded! Exploding! Sometimes the forms are very different: is, were, will be!”

“So, take the verb ‘is’. So useful, the most common verb of all. In English it has different forms, such as ‘is’, ‘am’ and ‘are’. Each of these sentences consists of a pronoun followed by the verb ‘is’ in the appropriate form for the pronoun:”

I am. You are. He is. She is. It is. We are. You all are. They are.

“The subject of a verb is what does the action of the verb or what is being described by the verb. In English the subject usually comes before the verb. The subject of ‘The tomatoes are red’ is ‘The tomatoes’.”

“The Latin verb that means ‘is’ is called sum. Paired with the Latin subject pronouns, its forms look like this.” She wrote them in the air with her finger:

Singular Latin Subject Pronouns with Forms of the Verb sum

Plural Latin Subject Pronouns with Forms of the Verb sum

“Verbs also have a property called number. When the subject is singular, then the verb must be singular in number. When the subject is plural, then the verb must be plural in number.”

“Verbs and subject pronouns also come in three different persons. The forms sum and sumus are called 1st person. The forms es and estis are called 2nd person. The forms est and sunt are called 3rd person. The subject pronoun and the verb must have the same number and person; you cannot mix and match. This is called agreement of number and person.”

“To make this more concise, let me draw you a smaller chart. Write this down carefully: it is very important. These are all the forms of sum with the corresponding subject pronouns:”

Forms of sum with Subject Pronouns (Present Tense)

Drill

“Provide the form of the verb sum that agrees in number and person with the subject pronoun shown:”

1. id

2. vōs

3. nōs

4. tū

5. ego

6. ea“Careful! There are two possibilities here.”

Nouns

“The subject of the verb can also be a noun. A noun is the name or label of a person, place, or thing: Latinitas, Menaechmus, Julia, the Romans, the boy, the girl, the tomato, men, women, potatoes – all nouns. There are as many nouns as there are things in the world you can name. Here are five nouns. Put these in your vocabulary:”

Vocabulary

“When a noun is the subject of a verb, the verb is most often in the 3rd person. Since ‘young adult’ is one person, that word goes with the 3rd person singular form. Since ‘twins’ are plural, that word goes with the 3rd person plural. Here are some examples:”

Examples of Noun Subjects

Adulescēns est. A young adult is.

Geminī sunt. Twins are.

I looked up and asked, twins are what?

Predicates

“Ah, an excellent question. To answer that we need predicates. A predicate states a property of the subject of a verb. In English the predicate usually comes after the verb. For example: I am a playwright. The pig was our dinner. Tomatoes are red. Here are some sentences for you to translate. But before you do, be aware of today’s RULE:”

Today’s RULE

“Today’s RULE: After you read the Latin aloud, mark the words that are the subject, the verb, and the predicate, and write what the person and number of the verb are, then translate, like this:”

Today’s RULE, Illustrated

Tū (subject) es (verb, 2nd singular) adulescēns (predicate).

You are a young adult.

“Personal names are nouns and thus can serve as subjects or predicates. Translate these, but don’t forget the RULE.”

Exercises 1-8

1. Nōs sumus geminī.

2. Is est adulescēns.

3. Ego sum parēns.

4. Tū es Menaechmus.

5. Messeniō est adulescēns.

6. Vōs estis geminī.

7. Ego sum fīlia.

8. Eī sunt geminī.

Vocabulary

“Here are some little words, useful for making sentences, a handy phrase, and the verb sum that we discussed earlier. Try to translate the short example phrases after each one:”

Translating from English to Latin

“Now let’s try to translate from English into Latin. Mark an English sentence according to the RULE like you did with the Latin sentences.”

Translating from English to Latin with Today’s RULE

I am Messenio.

I (subj.) am (verb, 1st sing.) Messenio (pred.)

Ego sum Messeniō.

Exercises 9-11

9. We too are twins.

10. He is Menaechmus, but you are not.

11. She is a parent.

Reading: Roman Personal Names

“Now we’ll learn a little about Roman personal names–in Latin! Read the Latin aloud and try to work out its meaning using the vocabulary provided below each paragraph.”

Adjectives

“An adjective is another kind of word that you can use as a predicate. An adjective is a word that identifies a characteristic of a person or thing. The adjectives below have three different forms. The form you use depends on whether the subject of sum is masculine, feminine, or neither – we will say neuter for the third option, since that is the Latin word for ‘neither’, that is, neither masculine nor feminine:”

Vocabulary

Agreement of Gender

“English has a few gendered pronouns: ‘he’ and ‘she’ and ‘it’, like is and ea and id in Latin. In Latin, ‘they’ has three different forms, for the three genders – masculine, feminine, and neuter: eī, they (masculine), eae, they (feminine), ea, they (neuter). There is a simple rule called agreement of gender: Any predicate in Latin must have the same gender as the subject. If you say is est bonus, it means ‘he is good.’ The subject (is) and predicate (bonus) are both masculine forms, so they agree.”

“Now show me you understand. Try to translate this: ‘you are good.’”

I said, Tū es bonus.

“Who is good?” she asked me, sharply.

You are.

“Grātiās, thank you. But I am a woman. Fēmina sum. You said, you are a good man. Correct that!”

And I corrected it: Tū es bona.

Word Order

“Excellent. Now we come to a big difference between Latin and English. In Latin, words are spoken in an order that often makes no sense in English. The order may look strange, but remember this: Latin typically puts the most important word in a sentence first. The predicate is often the most important word, because it tells us something new. All of the following Latin sentences again contain a subject and a predicate. Mark up according to the RULE, and, when you translate, be sure to put the subject first:”

Translating from Latin to English with Changed Word Order

Latinitās sum ego.

Latinitās (pred.) sum (verb, 1st sing.) ego (subj.).

I (subj.) am Latinitas (pred.).

Exercises 12-14

12. Bonum est id.

13. geminī estis vōs.

14. Bonus est fīlius.

Verb Tenses: Present, Imperfect, Future

“Now, because the sentences we have seen so far are true now, in the present, their verbs are called present tense. But there are also forms that let you say something was the case in the past. These forms of sum are called the forms of the imperfect tense. They all begin with the letters era-:”

Forms of sum, Imperfect Tense, with Subject Pronouns

Exercises 15-19

“Mark up and then translate these into Latin. Remember to put the predicate first! And copy all the commas and punctuation.”

15. We were twins.

16. You were Menaechmus.

17. He was Menaechmus.

18. I was Messenio, whoever I was.

19. She was good.

“Finally, there are also forms that mean someone or something ‘will be’ so, in the future – forms of the future tense. These all begin with the letters erō, eri–, or eru–:”

Forms of sum, Future Tense, with Subject Pronouns

Exercises 20-24

“You can mark and translate these sentences now. Again, put the predicate first.”

20. You will be a parent.

21. You all will be twins.

22. He will be one.

23. We will be two.

24. She will be good, but you will not be.

Personal Endings of the Verb

“Did you notice a pattern in the forms of sum? In all three tenses (present, imperfect, and future), the last letters are the same or almost the same. These final letters are called personalendings.”

Verb Personal Endings

“These endings are very useful! When you see them at the end of a Latin verb, you will know the person and the number of the verb almost every time you see them.”

“Now let’s take a look at the Latin of the Menaechmi.” She handed me a scroll that contained the words of the play. “First, read the Latin out loud. Take your time.”

I read it out loud. It was very hard. She patted my shoulder, and continued:

“Now write these lines in your book – in Latin:”

Exercises 25-29

25. Hello, young man, whoever you are. “I said ‘hello’ in Latin to you earlier today.”

26. My name is Menaechmus.

27. But my name too is Menaechmus.

28. We are not twins.

29. But you all are! You all are twins!

“Now see? Mox Plautus tū eris, soon you will be a Plautus, who started out writing scripts as simple as this at some point. Of all the plays that he wrote, only twenty still remain; the rest were lost to time. These are the oldest texts of Latin to survive in complete form, copied for hundreds of years by hand, and reproduced by machine ever since the year 1500. This play, the Menaechmi, was the inspiration for Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors. When Shakespeare was a student in school he was reading his Plautus in Latin.”

But my hand was sore from writing so much, and I could not picture Shakespeare. Instead, I rubbed my joints and stared at my fingers, watching them quiver. When I looked up again, I was not on the bleachers, but back home in my bed. My notebook was with me; Latinitas was gone. But I could see her in my mind, in animō, and I waved valē, goodbye.